Ender’s Game

In the near future, a hostile alien race has attacked Earth. If not for the legendary heroics of International Fleet Commander Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley), all would have been lost. In preparation for the next attack, the highly esteemed Colonel Hyrum Graff (Harrison Ford) and the International Military are training only the best young minds to find the future Mazer. Ender Wiggin (Asa Betterfield), a shy but strategically brilliant young leader, is recruited to join the elite. Arriving at Battle School, Ender quickly and easily masters increasingly difficult challenges and simulations, distinguishing himself and winning respect amongst his peers. And sooner than anyone thinks he gets promoted to commander, and even sooner than that, Ender is ordained by Graff as the military's next great hope, resulting in his promotion to Command School. Once there, he's trained by Mazer Rackham himself to lead his fellow soldiers into an epic battle that will determine the future of Earth and save the human race.


In the book, it said that Ender was six years old when he got invited to go to Battle School and was that age when he beat up Stilson. Although they didn’t get Ender’s character the best I thought they could, they did get other characters that were like the book described them. All the characters like Bean, Alai, and Bernard were close to what I pictured them to look like. But the most interesting character that I wanted to see was the Formicines. In the book it was an ant-like species and in the movie it looked like that except bigger. A character that surprised me though was Major Anderson. It was because in the movie because the character playing Major Anderson was a lady. And in the book, I thought it was a man all the way through the book.


The setting in the book was on Earth then moved to Battle in space and after that to Eros where Ender practiced on the simulations. At the end, Ender goes to the bugger’s home and lives there for some time until he gets a sign from the buggers and finds the baby queen and then travels the universe in search for a home for the bugger queen. It was close to the same in the movie, but the movie had the sign of the bugger queen on Eros, so it never showed the buggers homeland. I think that the producers of the movie didn’t have the time to show the buggers homeland. But, the rest of the movie was pretty much the same as the book.


I think that the theme of the book was know your enemy before you try to hurt them. In other words, if you want to punish someone you have to have proof that they did something bad, and not to anybody, but to yourself. To me, this theme is more for adults, because kids wouldn’t want to punish someone like how the adults would. They would be quick to take any problem they have to the judge at the court.

“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.” This line was said by Ender after he defeated the formicses in their homeland and blew up the planet that they were living on. It means that for him, because he is so smart, he can fully understand his enemies’ feelings so that he can destroy his opponent easily. But he is also kindhearted and not meant to kill that when he kills his enemy, he knows their feelings and how they think and suddenly feels sorry for them and loves them. It is this way because Ender never wanted to hurt anybody but the teachers never asked him what he wanted, but just told him to do things.

Some things that were in the book are not in the movie, which kind of makes the movie have to change stuff because they had to fit the whole story plot on about two hours. One of things from the book that I noticed that were missing from the movie was that Ender went to the buggers’ home planet to find the young queen that he searches a home for. In the movie, Ender was on Eros when he found the baby queen. I thought that was one of the parts they should’ve put in the movie because that was at the home of the buggers and where Ender destroyed the buggers and would then help them relive.

An element from the movie that was different from the book was that the Sergeant Dap was in the movie a lot. In the book he was only shown when Ender was a launchie, but in the movie he was with Ender when he want to Command School and defeated the buggers on Eros. He probably made the change because he didn’t want to add too much other characters into the movie. An actor that I thought played it differently from what I thought they would was when Alai didn’t kiss Ender on the cheek when he said “Salaam.” It made the movie worse because when Alai did that it was supposed to show how close Ender and Alai were to be, but they didn’t seem too close in the movie.

The movie and the book were both good, although the movie didn’t show some of the scenes that I thought were important to be in the movie. But if I had to choose I would read the book rather that watch the movie. Either way though, you’ll have a good time if you read or watched the movie.